U2 'Invisible' by Mark Romanek
David Knight - 12th Feb 2014
With the new U2 song Invisible being available for free on Sunday February 2nd to benefit [RED] – and receiving over 3 million downloads globally raising more than $3 million in donations from Bank of America – a 60 second clip of the video appeared in an ad break during Sunday's Superbowl.
Now the video has been released in full today. Directed by Mark Romanek, it's a performance video but it's also technically groundbreaking, thanks to the ingenuity of British creative studio Marshmallow Laser Feast (or MLF), who designed a real-time visual system that captured and analysed U2’s movements as they performed on a stage, allowing the band to generate visuals interactively on a giant LED screen behind them.
MLF - Memo Akten, Robin McNicholas, Barney Steel – worked with Juliette Larthe and Mark Logue of PRETTYBIRD to realise their concept, which was to create an interactive 3D lighting and video architecture that directly translated the band and audience’s movement into striking video and lighting output. Then the video was directed by Mark Romanek - utilising world class LD Patrick Dierson – and shot over three days in a hangar in Santa Monica with 1,000 extras.
“Cameras track the movement of the band and audience and feed that information into the Punkalator, an application developed specifically for this project by MLF,” explains MLF director Robin McNicholas. “This then interfaces with a Green Hippo Media Server and works in sync with Protools and a GrandMA lighting console.”
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David Knight - 12th Feb 2014
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Credits
Production/Creative
- Director
- Mark Romanek
- Producer
- Aris MacGarry
- Producer
- Juliette Larthe
- Production Company
- AC
- Production Company
- P
- 1st AD
- David Dean
Camera
- Director of Photography
- Philippe Le Sourd
Lighting/Grip
- Gaffer
- Bill Silic
- Grip
- Johnny London, Jr.
Misc
- Concept
- Marshmallow Laser Feast
- Lighting
- Marshmallow Laser Feast
Other credits
- STAGING & EQUIPMENT & TECHNICAL SUPPLY 
- ARE Production 
- Producer 
- Antony Randall 
- LIGHTING & INTERACTIVE CONCEPT & LIVE/REAL TIME DESIGN 
- Marshmallow Laser Feast AKA Barney Steel, Memo Akten, Robin McNicholas 
- Producer & Exec Producer 
- Juliette Larthe 
- Exec Producer 
- Derek Richmond 
- Head of Production 
- Margo Mars 
- Line Producer 
- Mark Logue 
- Production Assistant 
- Ciara Mc Gowan 
- Production Co-ordinator 
- Lana Salfiti: 
- Software Developer 
- Marek Bereza 
- Animator 
- James Francis 
- Animator 
- James Medcraft 
PRETTYBIRDUK:
- Animator 
- Ersin Han Ersin 
- Animator 
- Chris Thompson 
- Animator 
- Cai Mathews 
- Content Editor 
- Mike Harrison 
- Pre-Vis Artist 
- Young Eun Kim 
- Media Server Consultant 
- John Montague 
- Lighting Consultant 
- Jonny Milmer 
- MA programming WYSIWYG 
- Adam Power 
- MA programmer 
- Patrick Dierson 
- Media server programmer 
- Loren Barton 
- Editor 
- Geoff Hounsell 
- Editing Company 
- Arcade Edit 
POST-PRODUCTION:
David Knight - 12th Feb 2014